UPDATE Pokemon Go Players Losing Their Accounts Again

UPDATE May 4, 2019: Trainers, it seems like some players are losing their accounts for the second time this year (as per reports from April 24, and reports from May 4, 2019).

Reports are coming in that active high-level players are unable to sign in and the following message pops up:

Unable to sign in. Please check that this Pokemon Go account exists and you have correctly selected New or Returning Players.

On their second attempt to log in, the game takes them back to a new level 1 account, with the same username as their lost account, but this time they can only catch starters. What is interesting is that the lost account is still visible to other players on their friend lists as Lvl 40.

One Pokemon Go player lost his account on April 24, 2019 and did everything he could to bring it back. Unfortunately, without luck so far.

Spadesix: This happened to my level 40 account on April 24th. Facebook login and linked. I know my password, I’m logged in Facebook. Tried uninstall and reinstall, no luck. Emailed Niantic April 25th, no response besides the automatic. Never putting real money into a Niantic game again. The game since launch has been buggy, and basically, I’ve got nothing to show for spending hours and hours into my game. I’ve been hoping for the best up until now but, if this is even happening to 100 people, that’s 100 too many. If it was that few, a company that makes billions should have the resources to respond properly….

The cause behind this is still unknown, but we hope to see an answer and a fix from Niantic ASAP.

UPDATE January 19, 2019: Niantic Support responded on this issue and confirmed these accounts are not deleted, it’s just a bug and they are working on it.

u/NianticGeorge: Thanks for kicking off this conversation, u/StrangeFreak, and thanks to everyone for your patience while we investigate this issue. We’re sorry for not providing an update earlier.
We’re aware of an issue that’s preventing a subset of Trainers from being able to log into Pokémon GO. If you’re affected by this issue, you’ll see a message indicating that you’re unable to get game data from the server. Don’t worry, your account hasn’t been deleted!
We are hard at work untangling this sticky situation, both to resolve the immediate login issue and address the impact that it is having on Gyms with Pokémon from affected accounts, as well as identify the root cause to prevent this situation from happening in the future.
We have begun the process of restoring access to those accounts that are unable to log in and resolving the issue with affected Pokémon in Gyms. Please bear with us, as this will take some time to fully complete.
Your understanding is truly appreciated, we’ll be providing more updates to impacted Trainers as information becomes available.

PREVIOUS STORY January 18, 2019: Trainers, reports are coming in that players are losing their accounts over a bug and no one knows what is causing this, not even Niantic.

Many players tried to log into the game and an error saying “Failed to game data from the server” popped up on their screen and players are getting locked out of the game. Most of them reached out to Niantic searching for an answer, but Niantic is not responding. Pretty much they are leaving their best players out in the cold.

But that’s not all. This bug has a side-effect – the game will crash to anyone who will interact with any Gym that has a Pokemon from the “dead accounts.”

So, is there a way to know which Gym is “affected” because I don’t want my game to crash? I’m really sorry, but no.

Hi Trainer,
Thanks for your patience, we’ve identified your account as one of a small subset of players who have been experiencing this issue.
We know how disruptive this is to your Pokémon GO experience and we’re working to resolve this as quickly as we can.
As more information becomes available, we’ll reach out to update you directly.

He kept on trying and he didn’t receive any answer until today:

Hi Again,
I can understand your eagerness in accessing your Pokémon GO account. That being said, currently, we do not have any update on the issue that you are facing. We are collecting similar reports from other players as well to fix this issue effectively.
Your understanding and patience towards this situation will be highly appreciated as our team is already investigating this issue.
Have a nice day!

Now, I know sometimes they ask us to be patient and everything will be okay eventually, but when you spend real money on a game and ended up losing your account without reason and explanation, that’s when things get serious.

This has to be concerning to Niantic and I really hope these players will receive a ton of in-game rewards!

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Hi, gamers! You can call me Mr. DComplex. I'm a gamer, a hardcore gamer. My favorite genres are Action RPG and MMORPG. At the moment I'm using my PC as my only gaming platform, but soon I might get a new PS4 from Angel.
Update - Angel did get me a PS4, oh wait, it's the PS4 PRO 1TB!!! Much love bro!

6 Comments

It is always something new, old bugs reappearing..
New bugs coming into the game, one never knows if something is a bug or a feature.
This serious bug however should not be happening.
Most high level players have spent REAL money on this game, get no real support nor some sort of reimbursement from Niantic.
It’s time that they show their loyal players some respect and make up to those which suffer from these bugs.
A lot of players are leaving as they’re losing their patience, with standard and also false replies from “customer service”.

This really sucks. My girlfriend and I have been playing together since Dec.2017 an have done a lot of community days my favorite and now most disappointing was the Totodile community day. I hadn’t done one one of these before spent 6+ hours out (had the wrong start time at first). The past few weeks I’ve noticed that all of my shiny Totodile’s were miss and so are my girl friends. I know I didn’t trade or transfer any of the because my girlfriend was my only friend in the game until just last month. An my first trade to one was just 2 days ago.I was over excited to even have a shiny cause I have bad luck finding them, but for all of mine and my girlfriends shines to just go miss make no sense. It also sucks that I see other people are getting the cold shoulder even with their accounts. We as players invest time money and energy into this game for bugs in the code or updates to completely screw us over. What’s even more sad is they told me there is nothing they can do an it was my fault they are gone but they can check everything about someone’s account but can’t check things like this. Like come on if I had a holographic Charizard card do I really look like I would accidentally trade that to someone. shinies in Pokemon go are as rare as holographic cards I’m sure everyone like myself would take precautions not to transfer or trade without being sure this is something they wanted.

I am experiencing the same thing. After doing a little digging, I conclude that my account has been hacked. Niantic gives people the ability to change linked Gmail without noticing the original email linked to the game account has been changed and, doesn’t give link to the original email to reverse its proses (this is how Gmail and other prevent anybody’s account being hacked). As long as the Pokemon account is linked to any two login method, anyone of them can be unlinked. I try to present the proof of ownership such as billing that I charged the last years or so, the original emails that I regain access to, and the fact that all my friend’s has been removed. I got in touch with Niantic and they said my account is still active under different email address. However, Niantic just don’t care about it and reply me on email that they can’t help me and just don’t care about its player being hack and blame all the mistakes to the player . I hope someone can do something about it as I have spent time and money for the account

I had this same thing happen to me on the morning Rayquaza came back. So the day an update took place, I got the same message as above…. My account is marked new or returning player….
Everyday now we go in circles as they say I must have let my account information get vulnerable and someone changed my email even though my 40 level character is still stuck with the same last catch I made… So that turned me into a level 1 character and its on me so they
Can’t help me fix it.
I show them I can still log and get level 1, my friends still see me at level 40 with same last catch.
If anyone knows someone who can help me or who I can contact to get better help. I can share days of them asking the same question and giving me the same answer.
I spent all this time getting my character to level 40 and it’s all gone and they just wipe there hands of the problem instead of helping me.